Huge Crash in Spa Porsche Supercup

Today is the 2012 Spa F1 GP. I’m glued to the coverage on Sky Sports F1 HD with Twitter running on the iPad in the background. Today was also the penultimate round of this year’s Porsche Supercup.

F1 journo Adam Cooper tweeted this earlier: “Big shunt in Porsche Supercup with a car rolling on the way up the hill after Eau Rouge. But no safety car out”. Here’s some video of that incident.

The Team Bleekemolen car (below) was being driven by Jeroen Mul. Starting tenth on the grid, he gets a tap from the rear on the exit of Raidillon, which then sets off a chain of events leading to upside-down deceleration before the car rights itself, crosses the track and hits the barriers opposite. Not a small event!

I’ve done a lot of track days at Spa. Climbing up from Eau Rouge through Raidillon and on to the Kemmel Straight is one of the scariest parts of the track. You are absolutely flying here – sometimes almost literally – and every track day sees people destroying their cars. I remember one utterly destroyed F360 Spyder when they first came out: the owner frantically ripping the number plates off in the paddock after it was dragged back. If you can’t afford to wreck it, don’t take it on track at Spa.

Jeroen’s last tweet before this accident was “Good morning everyone! A beautiful day for a good race here in Spa. Watch the race live at 11.45 on Eurosport and Eurosport HD!” Mike Hedlund has since tweeted “First Supercup race in the books. Got my ass kicked but had fun! @Jeroen_Mul had a bad crash in front of me, but he is fine!” Team boss Sebastian Bleekemolen has tweeted the above picture of the damage, adding: “What a race! @Jeroen_Mul rolled over just in front of me. Scary! He’s ok, so that’s the only good thing.”

Porsche Supercup is flat-out drama. Next weekend is the last round at Monza- will update the championship table shortly.